Groups rally against texting while driving – with little noise on federal action

Transportation, communications and corporate leaders united Wednesday in an effort at self-regulation.

Their pitch — to thwart the tide of deadly accidents that come from texting while driving — had the passion of a public service announcement and the weight of a celebrity entourage. What it did not have was much of a plea for federal action.

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“This is a campaign to change personal behavior,” said AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson at D.C.'s George Washington University, where the company highlighted its “It Can Wait” movement and asked young drivers to sign a pledge promising to hold off on texts.

Perhaps more appropriately linked to President’s Barack Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” initiatives, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told POLITICO after the event that a nationwide ban would be a “good next step.”

LaHood said he’s engaged lawmakers about enacting a broader bill. “If I’m still around next year, I’m going to try to get Congress to do that,” he said.

Under a second Obama administration, the secretary said he would discuss his future with the president before making a decision.

The secretary has made distracted driving a headliner of his administration but has kept the focus primarily on state laws. “Three and a half years ago when we started with the first summit, nobody was talking about it,” he said. At that time, 18 states had some law against texting while driving. Now, 39 have regulations.

The issue has taken on particular resonance since, with about 3,000 people killed in distracted driving accidents in 2010. Teen drivers accounted for 11 percent of those crashes, according to data released Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But public service campaigns appear more palatable amid manufacturer concerns about market limitations and a rising resentment of governmental intervention.

“Technology can help solve a problem that sprang from technology,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at the event, pointing to innovative mobile applications that block texts like CellSafety or in-car technologies such as Apple’s Siri that allow for hands-free conversations.

He expressed a need to alter social norms and “change the laws,” but emphasized those passed by states.

When it comes to moving beyond, a slender line appears between public advocacy and general support.

“If you make people aware of the danger, public support for any kind of legislation that’s needed would be there as well,” AT&T’s Stephenson told POLITICO. “I would think a national policy would be superior than every municipality around the country doing it differently, right?”

Just don't expect to see that preached in corporate-backed outreach campaigns.

“It’s not something we’ve gone out and actively sought,” CTIA-The Wireless Association’s John Walls said, “but we support the idea.”

Once considered a Draconian mandate, federal drunk driving and seat belt laws now feel commonplace. But even safety organizations have shied away from a definitive stance on a nationwide law.

“It’s a state-by-state situation, not really a role for the federal government,” said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association.

Henry Jasny, the vice president for Advocates of Highway and Auto Safety, also backs state laws. “It’s always nice to have a corporation do voluntary service announcements and to educate the public, but without a law the public doesn’t get the message,” he said.

Even they have drawn a line. The agency is banking on a new grant program in the transportation law, he said, to assist states. “If it doesn’t then we may have to consider a federal requirement.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 7:34 p.m. on September 19, 2012.

There will one day be a simple trade-off between drivers having the capability to utilize all varieties of in-vehicle electronic communications at will and autonomous vehicle operation that removes the manual driver from active operating responsibility; that day is approaching more rapidly than most in the general public and all of the State highway agencies recognize at the present time.

Since that day is not yet here but the advances in personal mobile communications technology and society's enthusiastic adoption has radically shifted the threshold of completely safe operation across the legacy manual-drive transportation system now in place, there is growing need for imposition of legal and technological restrictions backed by harsh penalties for behaviors that reflect nothing less than reckless endangerment by voluntary driver distraction while engaged in any form of mobile communications during active operation of a motor vehicle.

One very legitimate step the Federal government could take is by imposition of a nationwide ban on cellphone use for voice calls (handheld or not) and texting while a person is engaged in manually operating any non-autonomous motor vehicle on any part of the Federal-Aid road network, and require that States actively enforce those prohibitions or risk sequestration of the Federal component of Highway Trust Fund outlays used to support the road network in its jurisdiction which has received the Federal-Aid designation. Such a ban would not apply to local (State, County or City) roads which are not part of the Federal-Aid network; States could elect to convert some non-Interstate or -Primary system roads which currently benefit from Federal funding into purely State-funded maintenance in order to reduce the scale of the prohibition and enforcement requirements, but all roads designated in the Interstate and Primary system classifications which carry the majority of traffic volume would be covered.

Try Safety First has developed new software protocols for cell phones to create a new safety standard in the wireless industry. The technology can automate the enforcement of individual state laws thereby saving gov’ts up to 3% of GDP. http://trysafetyfirst.com Brazil has put a bill on the table to mandate the technology in their country. We should do the same.

Try Safety First has developed new software protocols for cell phones to create a new safety standard in the wireless industry. The technology can automate the enforcement of individual state laws thereby saving gov’ts up to 3% of GDP. http://trysafetyfirst.com Brazil has put a bill on the table to mandate the technology in their country. We should do the same.